Angry in the Great White North

Ward Churchill, of course, is best known for calling the 9/11 victims in the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns", a reference to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who organized the mass deportation of Jews and other undesirables to extermination camps from throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. In the course of the uproar that followed, it was discovered that his academic research was seriously flawed, with "findings of falsification, fabrication, plagiarizing, improper reporting of results, and failing to follow standard rules that apply to author names on publications".

The allegation has been made that the evaluation of his work was prompted by a desire to take revenge on Churchill for his comments after 9/11. In a sense, those allegations are true. His actions did generate specific interest in the body of his work. But if the findings are true, then he is guilty of serious academic misconduct. Many people point out that if the authorities are taking revenge on him, they are only able to do so because of Churchill's sloppy work.

In any case, we'll learn about Ward Churchill's fate soon enough:

Dismissal hearings for University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill were held this past week. Ward Churchill appeared before the Privilege and Tenure Committee with many witnesses speaking in his behalf. The committee will have 30 days to issue its findings to CU president Hank Brown. Brown will weigh the findings and make a recommendation to the Board of Regents.

The rest of the article lists groups and associations who think Churchill is being ill treated, such as the Emergeny Summit of Scholars and Activists. The unifying theme is that academic freedom is being suppressed. President Brown will be considering the charges of academic misconduct, separate from the question of whether he abused his academic freedom, and Churchill as not been successful in defending himself against these misconduct charges in the past. In just element of the investigation, the findings were quite unambiguous:

The University of Colorado's investigative committee determined that Churchill had plagiarized the work of Professor Fay G. Cohen of Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, and republished it in a book edited by his wife Annette Jaimes. The previous year, Churchill had edited his own book of collected essays, which had included Cohen’s chapter on fishing rights. Churchill then solicited Cohen’s essay for republication in his wife’s book. Cohen refused to grant Churchill and Jaimes permission to republish the essay.

In Jaimes’ book, the essay in question is attributed to the "Institute for Natural Progress," the same pseudonym under which Churchill had previously published the disputed "Water Plot" essay. In the back matter, Jaimes writes that Churchill "assumed the lead role in preparing" the essay; he characterized his role as similar to a newspaper’s "rewrite man," who takes materials gathered by others and works them into a final version for publication.

After the Jaimes book was published, Cohen asked lawyers at her university to assess her rights in the matter. An internal Dalhousie University report concluded that "[t]he article … is, in the opinion of our legal counsel, plagiarism," Dalhousie spokesman Charles Crosby said, summarizing the report's findings in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News.

Churchill says that he has not committed plagiarism because he never said he wrote the essay. The CU investigative committee found Churchill's defense "implausible," observing that Churchill did claim authorship of the essay in his official Faculty Report of Professional Activity for the year 1991, followed by the parenthetical notation "for the Institute for Natural Progress." The committee concluded that Churchill's involvement in plagiarizing Cohen's essay constitutes an act of research misconduct.

There were multiple allegations, and the committee found Churchill guilty of four counts of willful and deliberate plagiarism.

Churchill has been suspended, with pay, since June 2006. It would seem that his paycheques might stop arriving before the end of February. Stay tuned.